Senior Hiking #371- Gold Hill Trail #3

52°

Sep 20, 2010…Gold Hill…tr #3 …
hike # 371 by Betsy

Rain, rain, rain…so it was off to one of our alternative hikes today and we were in no hurry to get going since it would be about a five hour hike. I was running on low again today with no energy for some reason. It rained all night.

It sprinkled rain all the way to the trail head, and there was no one there. The light rain would come and go and we couldn’t decide what or if to put rain gear on. Finally decided on none and of course that just made it rain but we persisted anyway.

About 25 minutes up the trail, with me in the lead, I heard a snap and turned around just in time to see a medium sized tree fall right across the trail behind me and about four feet in front of Jim…right between us! It was like watching it in slow motion. My footfall may have set off the tree to fall from its hold in the wet and soggy ground. Then as he took a step, a second smaller one came down and then as I watched a third smaller one began to fall, I yelled “watch out” but it was too late and it fell hard right on Jim’s head! He was okay and there was no blood. This was all such a surprise…then we set off a small bunch of rocks to come rolling down.

The wind was manageable today at the top, temps unchanged, with low clouds hanging over the mountains but we could see the lake and the river. Now we headed up to the top of the trail to the road and I decided I had run out of oomph so we sat on a log and ate our lunch, or rather I did because Jim forgot his food today. No three mile extra bonus loop for us today.

On the trip down we met a couple with two Boston Terriers…they asked how far it was to the top…they were about 45 minutes away. No sooner did we get to the truck, when the rain began to fall harder and once again, we made down just in time. That couple with the doggies was mostly likely getting quite wet by now and it didn’t look like they had any backpacks or rain gear. Their truck showed Washington plates!

I love my voice recorder! It’s like re-living the hike all over again…

Left home 10:05Started up 10:40
Got to top 12:30Turned around 1:00Got to truck 2:30
Total miles hiked 8 miles
Total hiking time 4 hours